Expense or Necessity? The Importance of Business Continuity

When your Internet goes down are you able to still reach your email and continue working? Without a business continuity plan, the answer is probably no.

What is Business Continuity?

Business continuity is defined as the capability of the organization to continue delivery of products or services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident. This encompasses planning and preparation to ensure that an organization can continue to operate in case of serious incidents or disasters and is able to recover to an operational state within a reasonably short period of time. The goal of planning is to minimize the effects of a disaster and its ramifications immediately after the event occurs.

When a disaster happens, everyone is in “emergency mode” and scrambling to recover. You need a plan before it happens.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is often called Continuity of Operations (COOP). It refers to the steps and planning needed to keep the business running during longer term outages while Disaster Recovery is taking place. Disaster Recovery may incur days or weeks of replacing lost or damaged systems, and without a BCP/COOP plan, your business is likely to be at a standstill.

For many, this would be an unsustainable loss that could lead to failure of the business or bankruptcy.

3 Things you as a Company Owner or Partner Should do

Inform

Make sure your business partners know you are prepared.

Reassure

Reassure shareholders, board members and your lender of your readiness.

Review

Review any and all contractual or compliance requirements to ensure you have fulfilled any requirements for a BCP to be in place.

So, One Question Remains…

What do you think a business continuity plan (BCP) means for your company? Let us know!

If you have questions about how to start planning your business continuity, give us a call at (256) 704-0234!